Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  From that point on, Stanko and Liz fought frequently. She was in his face about the secrets. In dribs and drabs, she learned more details of Stanko’s business, although it was, as usual, difficult to distinguish reality from daydreams.

  He told her that Ray Crenshaw was investing in the initial car purchases, and they were getting their cars cheap, wholesale, from the supplier, who was Doug McElveen. She asked Stanko where McElveen was getting the cars.

  “He buys them at auctions and sells them to Ray and me,” Stanko explained.

  Liz asked: “How much money have you and Ray invested?”

  Stanko didn’t give her a number, but he said it didn’t matter. He’d already made all of his investment back and he was $12,000 in the black.

  Liz thought at the time that was impossible. The damned lot hadn’t opened yet!

  “There,” Stanko had said to her. “Now you know everything.”

  She could only shake her head.

  “I soooo didn’t know everything,” Liz told the cop.

  “Did you ever see any verification of any of this?” Detective Lewis asked.

  “No, never.”

  “Any of it?”

  “None of it.”

  “What happened next?”

  She told Lewis that her domestic woes intensified dramatically on February 9, 1996, twelve days before he attacked her. Stanko called her on the phone and told her he was having a “bad day.” He sounded terribly upset, so she had the florist send him a balloon at work to cheer him up. It didn’t work. He was cheerless. Oh-oh, she remembered thinking. From that point on, he appeared to her to be on the verge of being out of control, teetering on the brink. She knew because she’d seen that “same temperament within him before.” Now there was no talking to him. Complete silence was recommended, because there was no way to predict what would trigger an argument. Sometimes she thought it didn’t matter what the topic was. His temperament was such that he could argue, and little else. Mention the weather and he’d pick a fight.

  “How long have you known Stephen Stanko?” Detective Lewis asked Liz.

  “Uhhhh . . .” The calendar in her head wouldn’t work. She was still very shaken. Who could guess that one day she’d be having a regular life, and the next answering questions because her boyfriend tried to kill her? Finally she answered, “Several years.”

  “Ever in trouble before?”

  “He’s been in a lot of trouble,” she said, her tongue clicking out the sound, and her eyes growing wide for a moment to emphasize her point.

  As far as she could tell, Stanko was the kind of guy who made his living by making promises he couldn’t keep. He was always raising money for something; then, when it came for him to supply whatever product was involved, the deal would fall through.

  He’d scramble to avoid the wrath of investors, and then the process would start over again. Round and round, he went. There had been several companies that he couldn’t have been more optimistic about, until the last moment when it turned out they didn’t exist. Liz had a sneaking suspicion that this was true of the used-car lot he was starting up with Ray Crenshaw’s money.

  Then there were times when he got a job someplace, as an employee, and still he couldn’t keep his nose clean. More than once, he’d gotten the pink slip because supervisors “falsely accused” him of something. Once, it was “falsifying orders,” apparently to collect commissions he hadn’t earned. Another time, it was “forging customer documents.” There was a third time, too, but she couldn’t recall the specifics. Maybe it would come to her later.

  Stanko suffered legal difficulties at least once because of his misdeeds on the job. Stanko had dealings with a man she only knew of as Mr. Orr (pseudonym). Mr. Orr and his son, both of Goose Creek, got in trouble with Stanko over something. Because of that difficulty with the law, Stanko had to report periodically to Romeo Radoran, an officer of Berkeley County Probation.

  “Did you and Stanko live at this same address back then?” Detective Lewis asked.

  “No, previous,” she said, and she gave Stanko’s address in Ashton Drive in Goose Creek. “That was before I bought this house,” she said, referring to the one on Durham Drive. She said she’d lived with her parents on Johns Island at that time and didn’t purchase her house until July 2005.

  “Now, this car lot deal, was that the first major business plan he’d kept secret from you?”

  “Oh no,” Liz said, shaking her head. “During the late spring of 1995—May, June—I discovered that he’d been pawning his personal items. He’d lost his job with Southern Chemical. He didn’t want me to know.”

  The blowup that time had occurred on June 23, 1995. She confronted him on several issues involving work, pawn slips, and a smattering of unexplained phone calls. The confrontation led to an explosive argument.

  “At that time, he threatened my life and put his hands around my neck,” Liz said. He didn’t choke her, but she was terrified because she assumed he was about to.

  Luckily, she got away from him. She ran to get her car and escaped to a friend’s house.

  “Which friend?”

  “Mary Lou Culpepper.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “North Charleston.”

  Detective Lewis established that the victim had filed a report with the sheriff’s department after that attack—but she, in the long run, had decided not to press charges.

  After that, she and Stanko only talked occasionally on the telephone. He was living at the time with Randy and Charles Bishop, in the Devon Forest neighborhood, along the northern edge of Goose Creek.

  On July 1, or thereabouts—she wasn’t sure of the exact date—he left the Bishops home and moved to Atlanta, where he met Cynthia Wilson, employed by Turner Broadcasting.

  Liz didn’t see Stanko during this time. She wasn’t sure of the details, but she knew that Wilson was “taken” by Stanko for more than $4,000.

  “There was a long-term statute filed, and, to my knowledge, a judgment was filed against him for that amount,” she explained.

  Continuing with her chronology, Liz said it was September 26, 2005, when Steve Stanko returned to Charleston. He showed up at her door and she let him in. The following day, he was taken by his mother and sister to the Berkeley County Probation Office, where he was arrested, and eventually he served thirty-five days in the Berkeley County Detention Center.

  Liz went out and retained an attorney for Stanko’s defense, a guy named Rick Buchanan. In addition to providing him with representation, she further bailed Stanko out of trouble by paying off some of his debts, many of which appeared to have been incurred between May and July of 1995.

  Thinking ahead, Liz requested that a psychiatrist be called in to evaluate her boyfriend, and provide ongoing treatment following his release.

  When he did return—he was released on October 30—not much had changed. He was supposed to make restitution for the money he’d scammed, serve his probation in a clean manner, and do community service hours. But it was the same ol’ Stephen. Another deal was in the works, and Liz was to be the beneficiary. The deal was with Ray and Natalie Crenshaw, for a brand-new Yukon. And, as usual, Stanko always had a story as to why the deal was never finalized.

  A psychiatrist did have sessions with Stanko, and Liz was allowed to sit in, almost like marriage counseling. She was concerned enough about the Yukon that never arrived to mention it in front of the shrink. This irritated Stephen to no end. She continued to cross-examine him about the used-car lot, and the obvious fact that he wasn’t taking as close care of his legal responsibilities as he should. He wasn’t visiting his probation officer, he wasn’t making restitution, and he wasn’t serving the community. She probably did sound like a broken record, reminding him that he was in dire straits here, and he wasn’t adapting.

  Straight and narrow? Stanko couldn’t even find the straight and narrow. In response to her nags, she told Detective Lewis, he became verbally abusive.

 
The next blowup came on January 26, 1996, when Stephen Stanko was supposed to deposit a check in Liz’s account, to pay her back for the legal assistance she’d acquired when he was arrested. No surprise, the money never showed up.

  Then, on Valentine’s Day, 1996, a week before the attack, he told her that he had deposited the check in her account, just as he said he would. It was the bank. They must have put it into the wrong account or something. Later that day, he told her he’d been to the bank; the error had been discovered; he’d been issued a bank check, and had deposited it in her account. That turned out to be another lie.

  Liz was starting to get the idea. Stanko saw other people as marks, and she was the biggest mark of all, defending him and spending money on him long after she should have learned her lesson.

  Here was a guy who genuinely couldn’t help himself. When everything told him that keeping his word and doing the right thing was the best way to insure a happy future, he nonetheless told only lies and did the wrong thing every single time.

  After Valentine’s Day she questioned him about all of it. She took his word for nothing and asked for verification. That made Stanko jittery and more than a little hostile.

  “On Sunday morning,” she said, referring to February 18, “I opened the trunk of my car, a ’95 Honda Accord, to find Stanko had stashed some items from work in there.” He’d been asked to clean out his desk. She confronted him immediately, asking him if there was anything he wanted to tell her, any news about his job that he wanted to share. He said the items were just some stuff that he couldn’t keep at the office—which he referred to as “the tower,” to make his new position seem more important.

  By Sunday evening, Stanko was extremely agitated, telling Liz that he’d just gotten paged by Doug McElveen. The cars McElveen had purchased at auction were ready, and Stanko and Ray Crenshaw were going to pick them up for their used-car lot.

  Trouble was, he hadn’t been out of Liz’s sight, and she knew there had been no page. His lies grew sloppier when he was agitated. At nine-thirty or ten o’clock that evening, Stanko left; he and Ray were going to go to McElveen’s car lot. He was gone for about two hours, during which time Liz was “terribly concerned and upset.” When he returned, she asked him if they’d been able to pick up the cars from McElveen, and Stanko said they had.

  The next morning, Monday morning, Stanko didn’t get up and go to work. Liz figured he’d lost his job, but Stanko said no, he was working a late shift, noon to nine at night. That afternoon, after he left, Liz called his job, and the receptionist said she hadn’t seen him. Liz asked if Stanko was still employed there, and the receptionist said she didn’t know. Liz called Natalie Crenshaw, who said she didn’t know either if Stanko still had a job, but she did hear that there had been some kind of argument at work on Saturday. Liz sensed the old pattern coming to a head.

  “I was aware of the signs,” she explained. “He became defensive and argumentative in a violent and verbally offensive manner.”

  Late that Monday evening, Stanko went to Crenshaw’s house. Liz drove around to keep tabs on Stanko’s whereabouts. She saw him outside Crenshaw’s house, sitting in what appeared to her to be an unmarked cop car. He was in there for a long time, maybe as long as ninety minutes.

  Part of the reason she was so tenacious about keeping tabs on Stephen Stanko, of course, was that she cared for him. But there was another factor as well. She feared that she was somehow—albeit innocently—involved. Stanko had borrowed Liz’s car and said he was having the passenger-side front-door panel repaired. In the meantime, he had her driving a GMC Jimmy, which he said came from McElveen. It had taken her a long time to get her car back, too long, and this just caused her to dwell harder on all of the unanswered questions she had.

  She returned home and removed the pillows from Stanko’s side of the master bed. She placed the pillows, along with a blanket, on the couch, so he’d know when he got home that he wasn’t welcome in her bed. She then went to sleep with the lights out.

  “When I woke up, he was in the bedroom, with a small flashlight. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, ‘Where are my pillows?’ I told him he was sleeping on the sofa. He said he was sleeping in the bed, and that I was a bitch.”

  He yelled the same things, over and over again, screaming that he hadn’t done anything wrong and that he deserved better. He called her a “stupid idiot” and an “old hag.”

  At the end of a verbal tirade, Stanko rolled up a robe in his hand and threw it at her, striking her in the head “fairly hard.” She told him she wasn’t going to put up with this anymore.

  He picked up a box of facial tissues and threw it at her. She grabbed the box and returned fire. She told him to leave. He went to the garage and returned with his luggage.

  He started packing in a somewhat haphazard fashion, the verbal abuse flying the whole time. In between insults, he screamed what were either more lies, or perhaps delusions.

  “I’m doing well,” he screamed. “I’m sleeping at night. I’m making money! I’m not lying! You are the problem! You are my problem!”

  He grabbed her and threw her down so that she landed hard on the floor.

  “If you touch me again, I’ll call the police,” she said.

  He slapped her across the head.

  “Go ahead and call the police,” he said. “I’ve already talked to the police today. I’ve talked plenty.”

  She tried to dial 911, at least twice, but each time Stanko hung up the phone so she couldn’t get through. One time he was too slow, and the call went through.

  Using the system’s caller ID, the emergency operator called Liz back. Stanko screamed that he was leaving and again began to throw items in his luggage.

  Liz answered the phone and said her boyfriend was leaving, but if he came back, she would call again, and if that happened, they should send someone quickly.

  Stanko didn’t leave, however, but he did sleep on the sofa. The next morning, Tuesday, February 20, at about seven-thirty, the phone rang and Stanko answered it. He entered the bedroom and told Liz that her brother was on the phone. She spoke to her brother briefly, no more than five minutes.

  When she hung up, Stanko reentered the bedroom and said, “I’m leaving today, and I won’t be coming back.”

  “I think that is for the best,” Liz replied.

  His movements, she noticed, were becoming manic again. While letting out a steady stream of rambling words, he was walking quickly in and out of the bedroom and going through the house, ostensibly making sure that he had left nothing of his behind.

  He came back into the bedroom and plopped down in a blue chair by the window. He told Liz once again that he’d done nothing wrong. She was the one who’d been wrong by being so suspicious about everything and asking too many questions.

  What did he expect? He’d recently been in jail! Liz thought. And he was only free because he promised to do certain things—and didn’t even have it together to do them. He’d done no community service, and the times when she did manage to drag him to see the shrink, he steadfastly refused to take responsibility for any of his actions, always turning the sessions around so that the focus was on her and how distrustful she was.

  She could see, and feel, his growing ire. He left the room and she could hear him rummaging through a laundry closet. “I thought he was just pulling out the dirty clothes that he wanted to take with him,” Liz told Detective Lewis.

  She heard the sounds of things being moved around in the closet, but she didn’t give it much thought. She stayed in bed, hopeful that Stanko would leave before they had an opportunity to fight again.

  He came back into the bedroom and she could see the wildness in his eyes. Now he stood at the foot of her bed, glaring at her. She could smell the strong odor of chemicals. Smelled like Clorox and ammonia.

  Her first thought was to ask him what he was cleaning; but before she had the chance, he said, “We can’t have you calling the police, can we? I have to shut y
ou up.” He jumped onto the bed next to her and pressed a chemical-soaked cloth over her face.

  She fought as hard as she could. When he pulled the cloth from her face, she managed to tell him that she wouldn’t call the police if he just let her go. “He said he didn’t believe me, that I would call the police.”

  She told him that whatever he had done, that adding murder or doing this was only going to make it worse for him. No reaction. She knew then that she was in deep trouble. He wasn’t going to let her call the police.

  Liz grabbed quickly for the phone, but he was quicker, and he was on top of her before she could grab the receiver. His strong arms were too much. He held her wrists together with one hand and, with his other arm, flipped her onto her stomach on the bed.

  Liz thought, Oh, my Lord, he is going to kill me.

  Even as Stephen sat on her, she managed to wriggle her left hand free and again reached for the phone, the landline. She only needed to press four buttons—speaker 911—but she couldn’t do it. He grabbed the phone cord and jerked it away.

  “You’re not calling anyone. I’m going to have to tie you up,” Stanko said. He tried to get the cord, to pull out of the phone, but couldn’t do it. So he reverted his attention to her, again holding her wrists together with one hand, while using the other to press the soaked rag over her face.

  While still applying pressure on her face, Stanko said, “This always works in the movies. Why isn’t it working now?”

  Even then, in her panic, she picked up on the premeditated nature of the violence, the way he had watched a movie once and made a mental note to try that if he ever tried to kill somebody.

  Stanko eventually took the cloth away from Liz’s face. She gasped for fresh air, her face slick and shiny with tears. Liz got the impression he was trying to think of another way to kill her. The second he lightened up on the pressure, Liz managed to bite his left hand.